STEVEN FRIEDMAN: The volume on a clear voice for change is being turned down bit by bit
A BURNT law library may confirm a great irony — that, at a time ripe for campaigns to help SA escape its past, there are few voices pointing to a new way of doing things.A few arsonists do not condemn an entire movement. But some who sympathise with student protest have defended the burning — a sign that a movement that began as a vital voice for change may be running out of useful things to say.The student protest movement began as an important call for universities to escape the past. Whether students were campaigning for a black voice on campuses or for education costs that did not force them into poverty, they were highlighting a reality in need of change. When universities began taking in students who had been excluded by apartheid, they did little to change how they operated so that they could enable the new students to reach their potential. As one educationist put it, universities expected the students to change so that they could stay the same.The student demonstrations for...
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